Chapter 62 – The State of Affairs

Chapter 62 – The State of Affairs

For the combatants of Luofeng Village, their greatest desire was to hunt down hordes of demonic beasts rather than staying behind to guard the territory and kill the sporadic demonic beasts that spawned. The efficiency of obtaining spiritual energy was simply too low this way.

However, for the safety of the territory and to earn spiritual energy for the territory, Cheng Yang had no choice but to assign some people to this task.

Now that Cheng Yang had announced that these duties would be handed over to the territory guards, everyone was naturally overjoyed.

“You may disperse now. Those who need to cultivate should cultivate, and those who need to kill monsters should go do so,” Cheng Yang said with a smile. He then led three combatants to the back of the territory altar, where the entrance to the Bloody Church dungeon was located.

Cheng Yang said, “This is a dungeon. Can you enter it?”

Chen Yun and the other two were stunned when they saw the portal. Cao Cun asked, “Lord, how… how is this portal within the territory?”

“Is that strange?” Cheng Yang was curious about Cao Cun’s reaction.

Cao Cun hesitated before replying, “In the world we came from, although there were dungeon portals within territory boundaries, that was only after the territory had developed to a certain level and incorporated wild dungeons into its domain. For a dungeon entrance to be directly beside the territory altar, like in Luofeng Village, is something we’ve never seen before.”

Cheng Yang immediately seized upon the key point in Cao Cun’s words and asked, “Your world? What was your world like?”

Cao Cun smiled bitterly, “When we entered this world, a large portion of our memories were sealed by the gods. We don’t remember much about our world, only scattered fragments, like this dungeon portal.”

Seeing Cao Cun’s sincere expression, Cheng Yang believed he wasn’t lying. This matched the common speculation from his previous life – whether it was these territory guards or the shopkeepers, none of them were from this world.

Since this issue clearly couldn’t be resolved at this stage, Cheng Yang set it aside for now and said, “Let’s not dwell on that. Can you enter this dungeon?”

Cao Cun and the others nodded, “As long as the dungeon is within the territory boundaries, we can enter.”

Cheng Yang was delighted, “Good. Later, Cao Cun and Xu Wu will enter the Hard difficulty dungeon. Although the final opponent in the Bloody Church’s Hard difficulty dungeon is a peak first-order Infernal Demon, there’s a trick to it…”

Cheng Yang then explained the method to clear the dungeon.

He was confident in sending these newly recruited guards into the dungeon because they were natural combatants with formidable combat awareness and experience that rivaled his own, despite him having survived in this apocalyptic world for a year. As long as they mastered the final technique, there would be no danger in entering the dungeon.

“Lord, let me enter too!” Chen Yun said earnestly.

Cheng Yang was taken aback, “You’re a melee class without any summoned beasts to assist you. Fighting a peak first-order demonic beast alone is too dangerous. Wait until your strength improves.”

To his surprise, Chen Yun insisted, “Lord, don’t worry. If I can’t handle a mere peak first-order Infernal Demon, I don’t deserve to be a territory guard. Moreover, I can wear equipment, use potions, and with my attribute bonuses, defeating this peak first-order Infernal Demon won’t be difficult.”

Seeing Chen Yun’s sincerity, Cheng Yang thought it over and agreed, “Alright, you can try. But don’t push yourself. If you find yourself outmatched, just tough it out and run to that tree. As long as you survive for two hours, the dungeon will automatically close, and you’ll be safe.”

“Thank you for the reminder, Lord,” Chen Yun bowed, though his expression showed he didn’t take Cheng Yang’s warning seriously.

Cheng Yang sighed inwardly, hoping Chen Yun truly had the capability.

Cheng Yang then transferred 200 spiritual energy points to Chen Yun for potions. He himself borrowed equipment from the combatants currently cultivating. It happened to be Liu Hao’s group, so Cheng Yang took Liu Hao’s full set of equipment. Although Liu Hao’s equipment wasn’t as impressive as Cheng Yang’s, it was among the best in Luofeng Village.

Chen Yun was very satisfied with the equipment and immediately entered the dungeon first, followed by Cao Cun and Xu Wu.

After the three disappeared, Cheng Yang began tallying today’s gains. While his personal gains were substantial, the territory’s overall income was what truly mattered to him.

After checking, Cheng Yang found that the territory’s spiritual energy had reached 2,200 points, more than half of which came from clearing the dungeon this morning, with the rest from killing monsters in the territory.

However, now that the Priest Statue had been upgraded to level 3, continuing to upgrade statue attributes would require 2,500 spiritual energy points daily. Fortunately, with the recruitment of Chen Yun and the others, if they could successfully clear the dungeon, they could provide an additional 1,500 spiritual energy points daily. Combined with the original income, the daily spiritual energy would exceed 4,000 points.

Even if humans occupied strongholds in the future, it would be impossible to increase spiritual energy income to this level in a short time. In the early stages of territory development, spiritual energy was the most critical factor limiting territory level advancement.

Next, Cheng Yang personally selected 10 suitable candidates to be promoted to Priests and brought them before the Priest Statue for promotion. These 10 Priests were assigned two to each combatant brigade.

Cheng Yang then counted the remaining timber, which amounted to over 80 cubic meters, and chose to build level 1 civilian houses. With this construction, Luofeng Village now had 58 civilian houses. However, even with this, over two-thirds of the combatants in Luofeng Village were still homeless.

Cheng Yang had considered speeding up house construction to provide shelter for these combatants. But timber production had always been Luofeng Village’s greatest weakness, an unavoidable issue that every territory must go through.

After this, Cheng Yang left Luofeng Village alone, heading into the distance to kill monsters.

Recruiting territory guards had depleted his spiritual energy reserves. If he didn’t work harder, he might not have enough for cultivation later that night. Of course, this was just Cheng Yang’s self-deprecating humor – even if he didn’t go out to kill monsters, he still had enough spiritual energy for cultivation.

His diligence was mainly to summon the full complement of territory guards as soon as possible.

Through studying the attributes of Chen Yun and the others, Cheng Yang discovered something. Although territory guards didn’t need to cultivate to improve their strength tier, their skill levels still needed to be raised through repeated use. In this regard, summoning guards earlier would be very beneficial for their strength improvement.

About half an hour later, when Cheng Yang opened his attribute panel, he was surprised to find his spiritual energy had increased by over 1,300 points. This reassured him – it seemed Chen Yun and the others had successfully cleared the Hard difficulty Bloody Church dungeon.

Before 1 AM, Cheng Yang exhausted his daily energy points, successfully crafting 12 bottles of Mana Potions, then continued battling monsters in the wild…

…

During these past few days, the development of Xiangcheng City’s main city had gradually gotten on track.

Three days after Yuan Jianze’s army took control of the main city, they had rescued nearly 50,000 people from the surrounding areas. Compared to Luofeng Village, their rescue methods were much simpler since they only focused on areas within one kilometer of the main city, requiring little travel.

However, as the population in the main city reached a certain number, troubles began to emerge.

First, the food problem for tens of thousands of people tested Yuan Jianze’s limits. Although they had determined through experiments that some demonic beast meat was edible, the small number of combatants meant they could only obtain a limited amount daily.

Second, with large numbers of refugees gathered together with nothing to do, underground organizations began to emerge. These people, taking advantage of the current upheaval, spread various religious doctrines among the population, causing significant management difficulties for Yuan Jianze.

Finally, some who advocated for fairness and freedom began speaking out, criticizing Yuan Jianze for monopolizing the Class Statues and demanding that class promotions be made public, allowing ordinary people to undergo class promotions.

These three major problems gave Yuan Jianze a headache. As a soldier who had come from a peaceful era, he couldn’t point his guns at ordinary civilians. At least not yet.

In the end, Yuan Jianze had to send some promoted individuals to search the ruins, clearing out former supermarket warehouse locations and finding a considerable amount of food. However, this still wasn’t enough to meet everyone’s needs. The military had to spend some spiritual energy points to buy food from the general store, ensuring no one went hungry.

As for those recruiting believers, Yuan Jianze adopted a high-pressure approach. While this had some deterrent effect, it couldn’t completely eliminate the problem, only driving the spread underground. Apart from increasing military surveillance, Yuan Jianze couldn’t think of any other solutions for now.

Regarding the demand for public class promotions, after careful consideration, Yuan Jianze decided to selectively open them up.

He made this decision because recent battles had caused further casualties among the military. Although the soldiers who went out to fight had undergone class promotions, their combat experience was still insufficient. Facing large groups of demonic beasts, casualties were inevitable.

Yuan Jianze planned to allow some ordinary civilians to undergo class promotions and participate in demonic beast extermination. This would not only help stabilize the main city’s situation but also reduce military casualties.

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